With her sisters, Martha and Sissy, Ms Fenstermaker has worked
to protect their family ranch in the Hill Country north of and
increasingly close to San Antonio. Listed on the National
Register of Historic Places, and known as the
Maverick-Altgelt Ranch and Fenstermaker-Fromme Farm, it holds
buildings and other artifacts dating back to the 1820s, and also has
valuable habitat for endangered species and lands for the recharge of
the Edwards Aquifer.

However, as San Antonio has grown, the
ranch has been threatened repeatedly with breakup by highways,
transmission lines, an airport, and other projects that the sisters
have successfully fought off through grassroots organizing and, at
times, litigation.

They have also been involved in
restoring vegetation on the ranch and in surrounding areas, through
the Native Plant Society's Plant
Rescue Committee (which collects native plants from sites slated for
bulldozing and construction) and its Project NICE, a.k.a. Natives
Instead of Common Exotics (which encourages nurseries to stock and
promote natives).

Some of their vegetation work has been
quite focused. In collaboration with the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they
have worked to restore the dense low brush that the endangered
black-capped vireo favors, while protecting the more mature juniper
that the golden-cheeked warbler relies upon.

They also have worked to monitor
creatures as slight as Monarch butterflies which pours through their
area during the spring, while also working to bring back the massive
Texas Longhorn, the Spanish breed that has such a tie to the history
of the Southwest and such a good fit to its harsh and droughty lands.

Through many of these efforts, the
sisters have worked to be stewards for a piece of history, family
tradition, and nature that grows ever rarer.